Full Storm Ahead
by percychased
Summary: It was always when she was tending to the flowers in the garden when he showed up. TeddyDom, post-Hogwarts. OS.


You've always felt like you're competing against your sister. It isn't fair competiton, you know, because she always wins and you most definitely don't.

Nevertheless, you're always competing against her. Every breath you take, she's done it better, prettier, smarter. She's the oldest, the role model, the one-to-be. You're kind of stuck in the middle - you're not black, not white, but grey and dull.

She's got the guy, too, because when she wins, she wins thoroughly. You have a quiet admiration for Teddy; you like his lopsided grin and rainbow hair. The whole niceness of him is just wonderful, and sometimes when you all go swimming in the pond by the Burrow, you sneak a peek. But who came blame you, really? It's not like it's a tug-of-war competition over him. He's Victoire's, and Victoire is his. Anything else is unimaginable.

You're standing in the garden of Shell Cottage, barefooted. Your toes are digging into the cool, soft dirt - you've never been able to explain it, but you just love the way your feet slightly sink into the dirt, the way it falls between your toes. You're watering the snapdragon plants hanging over the basket, warm in the mid-summer sun. The same sun that was causing your limp red hair to stick to your face with sweat.

"What're you up to, there?" a familiar voice asks, and you jump, splashing cool water all down your skirt. You hadn't heard anyone remotely near, but you turn around.

It's Teddy, with his hands in the pockets of his trousers. "Watering the snapdragons," you say calmy, turning back around to finish your task.

He leans forward, his hair matching the pink shade of the flowers. He's leaning close to you and the flowers, and you can hear his breathing. He's a little too close for comfort, and part of you is thinking that this is a bit odd, and the other half is telling you to shut up and enjoy it, really.

"You know," he says, plucking one straight from the dirt emitting a frown of protest from you, "these are nice - Victoire would like them, and it saves me money at the florist." Teddy grins widely at you, wiggling the flower teasingly. You're not too sure if you're disappointed or not. "And you," he continues, pausing for a moment, "should really wear socks. Your feet are filthy, I bet."

"Speaking of Victoire," he continues, and you'd really rather the conversation to end - you hear enough about Victoire as it is, "do you know where she went, Dom? I came here thinking she'd be here..."

"She's over at the Longbottoms, with Frank and Alice," you respond automatically - the Longbottom twins were her age and her best friends. You're best friends with their younger sister, Eleanor.

"Great," he says, pulling his wand out of his pocket, preparing to Apparate, "thank you."

You're still disappointed, but you don't know why.

* * *

You're sitting on your bed, with a Muggle book in between your legs and your back propped up on loads of fluffy pillows. The sun of the afternoon is long gone, ominous grey clouds rolling in from the west, booms of thunder and flashes of lightning lighting up the sky. In the distance, you hear the waves crashing against the shore, a comfortingly familiar sound. A cup of hot cocoa sits next to you, steam emitting from it and three marshmellows bobbing on the surface.

All in all, a pretty great evening.

Something crashes against your window. Curious, you stand up and draw the blind - a grey owl sits on the outer windowsill, looking slightly frazzled, holding a sopping wet letter in its beak. You push up the window, and the owl drops the letter on your lap before taking up shelter with your owl, Ptolemus.

You recognize the messy scrawl of your best friend immediately.

_Hey Dom,_

_Doing anything tonight? Mum says I'm allowed to invite a friend over, so if you wanna come, let me know..._

_I think your sister's here, too, up with Als and Frank._

_E_l

It wasn't as if you were doing anything but reading and eating tonight, and your parents wouldn't say no to a bit of alone time - in fact, they would probably relish it.

"Mum," you call down the hall - she's in the bathroom, doing her hair. You wouldn't have any idea why, especially in the evening...

"Oui?"

"Eleanor has invited me over to her house - it's okay with Mr and Mrs Longbottom, too," you call back.

"Go have fun," your mother calls back, and you stick your head back into your own room, preparing a bag to get ready.

Ten minutes later, you're ready and you're Flooing over.

"Quick as usual," Eleanor laughs, greeting you by the fireplace. She helps you up, and you both find the way to your room. You toss your bag on her bed, sitting on the bed and leaning back against the headboard.

"Make yourself at home," Eleanor says sarcastically, and you grin roguishly - or try to - at her. She sits next to you.

"Thanks for the quick escape," she says, sighing in relief. "I'm so bored, sitting here in my room while they're upstairs in their room laughing away and I'm doing nothing."

"I wasn't doing too much, either," you point out.

"Which means you were either reading or gardening."

"How did you know?" you ask sarcastically.

"Because I know you, Dominique Weasley," Eleanor says, jabbing your arm with her finger.

"Mind if I use the loo for a second?" you ask - it really wasn't your fault Floo travel made you queasy.

"Sure, I'm not going anywhere."

You swing your legs over the side of the bed, opening the door towards the hallway. You make your way up another flight of stairs - this place was four stories high - onto the third landing, which held Frank and Alice's seperate rooms and the house's closest bathroom.

You're just finishing up in the bathroom, slipping out the door when something - or someone - runs into you.

"I'm not a bloody baby, Teddy! You don't need to protect me every second of every day!" your sister yells from Frank's room, the door wide open, and you don't see Teddy until he leaves Frank's room, violently pushing past you, shoving you into the door. The doorknob presses painfully into your back, and you cry out in pain. He doesn't seem to notice, and you're kind of confused as to why he didn't Apparate out, but storms down the stairs instead.

Victoire sees you, her face still red in what you can assume to be anger. "Bugger off," she snaps at you, and the door clicks shut, leaving you in an empty and quiet hallway, with a bruise flowering at the base of your spine and an utterly confused look on your face.

* * *

You haven't seen Teddy for days, since the whole Teddy-Victoire incident at the Longbottoms' house. Your sister is more moody than ever, which leaves your parents focusing on her and you're able to slip away from the breakfast table to go outside and tend to your garden.

As you're watering the lilies, planted at the base of the house, your mind begins to drift to the incident that happened just days ago. A common topic to think about, now. It made quite the difference with Teddy not at Shell Cottage every day - it threw a ball into your daily routine. There wasn't any happy Victoire who cheerfully offered to 'fix up that carrot hair of yours' and there wasn't any Teddy who pinched your waist gently or leaned quite close before chatting about Victoire. You're wondering if that relationship of theirs is really over, or if they had just caught a snag; it had happened more than once with them, before.

It feels quite weird, you think.

After making sure the elegant lilies got the appropriate amount of water, you move on to the snapdragons. Half of the stem of the missing one - there's only four in the planter now - is still remaining, and it reminds you of him. You water them delicately, with a gentleness that you don't usually use.

Something snaps behind you, and you jump - the water drips down your trousers, and with a sense of deja vu. It better not be -

"Teddy," you say, knitting your eyebrows together with confusion at the man standing in the shadow of Shell Cottage, only a few feet away from you. Your heart is beating in your chest, and a million different scenarios emerge in your head - only one of them, tucked away in the far corners of your mind, involves you. And something good.

"Hi," he says quietly, pressing his lips together. His hands are in his pockets again - could this get any more reminiscent of the scene a few days ago? "I'm sorry for pushing by you in the hallway the other day," Teddy says, looking sheepish but catching her eye. The emotion is expressed easily through them, sparkling blue like the seaside: regret. "You didn't deserve that; you don't deserve that. I'm sorry. I'm here to see her... maybe... I don't know..."

"It's okay," you say, crouching down to inspect the other batch of snapdragons, the ones that were yellow instead of pink. Yellow that matched the mellowness of his hair color. You magically refill your watering can, leaning over and letting the water trinkle down onto them. You shouldn't really push your lucky, but you decide you were a Gryffindor for a reason and turn around and ask, "what is it you two fought about, anyways?"

Teddy fidgets, and you sigh. Next time, you should keep your mouth firmly shut. "Forget I asked," you say.

"No, it's alright," he protests quietly, and you turn back around with raised eyebrows. "It was really stupid; she thought I was, um, 'flirting' with someone else, and when I went to see her at the Longbottoms, she got upset that I was there - wanted friend time in there, I guess. But," he bites his lip, his hair turning a mellow shade of yellow, "I couldn't possibly imagine what Frank and Vic were doing all alone in there, without Alice."

Did she really do that? Victoire graduated with ten NEWTs, certainly she was smart enough not to... A stone sinks into your stomach - but that stone doesn't seem to squash all of the butterflies that lingered.

"She wasn't," you deny, "I'm sure it was harmless, and you're completely, disgustingly nice to Victoire and Victoire alone," you say - even though the last part's not so true - to you, at least. He's really nice to you, and half of the time, he makes stupid, pointless reasons to make small talk with you. But that's... irrelevant.

"That's not the thing, though," he says, looking dejected. "This whole relationship feels like a masquerade with her. It is a masquerade - we're putting on a show, I suppose. We look happy, but we haven't had proper time together in months... we fight, and nothing else... it's just fizzled... it's been over a year since we've done anything, and there's reasons and people why, you know... and I kind of..." he leads off nervously, not finishing his sentence.

The butterflies in your stomach are mending their broken wings as you reply. "That's too bad," you say in a high pitched tone - it was meant to sound sympathetic, but instead sounded like you swallowed helium (you took NEWT Muggle Studies, you know what that is) and you're cursing yourself internally as he gives you a funny look.

"I don't know why I'm telling you this," he starts, gulping, and you're placing down your watering can and staring up at him, still a few feet away, "but... I kind of, er, like someone else. I haven't done anything with her," he adds quickly, and you could feel a bubble of uncertainity float around you, "but I'm kind of making excuses to be around her."

Don't even start, you tell the optimistic side of your brain, which is starting to get a little excited.

Teddy continues, and you glance to the house to see if anyone can see - the curtains on the windows are shut, and everyone's probably still at the table. "She's wonderful, beautiful, intelligent, and I've never met anyone like her..."

You feel your imaginary bubble pop - you're not any of the things listed. At all. But he continues, still, and you're obliged to listen. He takes a step forward - you're only about a foot away, now, from each other. "But I want to be faithful to Victoire - I know I'm going to feel bad if our relationship ends, and her family is so wonderful that I couldn't bear to lose them." Even though he was probably referring to the Weasley-Potters in general, you still smile anyways.

"But she's perfect. I love the little freckle on her nose, and the odd little activites she likes to do. I like the fact she's not afraid to get dirty and the flaming color of her hair - it matches her personality. I'm not too sure if she'd like me back, however."

"I'm almost completely sure she would," if he meant you - great - and if he meant someone else, it was a legible response, too.

"I don't want to mess up, or ruin things, and maybe I should organize the mess I made first - "

"Shut up and kiss me," you say, praying to Merlin that the beautiful girl he was referring to was you; because if it isn't, you're going to be completely and utterly embarrassed. The boldness of your Gryffindor traits shine through.

His eyes widen - he must've meant someone else, you think, turning as red as your hair - but Teddy quickly regains himself, and his hands trace a line of gentle sparks down the side of your face, before his lips meet yours, and you can't even think, because the electricity shooting through your veins is enough to control the most defensive of minds. All you know is that you should have done this sooner, because the ribbons of pleasure tingling your spine is just too much.

You break apart, leaning back from one another. His cheeks are red and your cheeks are too, and you know that after this, there's a full storm ahead. But if that means that Teddy Lupin is yours, then bring the storm on.

* * *

a/n - .goodness. I typed this whole thing in the matter of two hours on my iPad, and suffice to say it's the longest thing I've ever written. And I've only ever used second person once before, so this is kind of a trial run. For Amber's House Cup Competition, Slytherin seventh-year, all prompts plus the extra one of yellow. John Green competition. As Strong as We Are United. Anyone mind dropping a review, just letting me know how I did?


End file.
